Shards of Glass
by Secre
Summary: A sister piece to Giving Up; the Boy-Who-Lived broke and the shards of glass of everyone else's life still need to be picked up. Because what is there to be said when so many people failed one boy so very, very badly. Triggers; suicide. T for safety and triggers
1. The Lily's Sister

As said in the blurb, this is a sister piece to Giving Up. A series of character portrayals of which so far this is the only one. There should be more. I think. Depends on my mood. It's dark, it's potentially triggering and you have been warned. As per usual, all reviews are very much appreciated. I am currently struggling through the next chapter of I Did Nothing, which simply doesn't want to be written. I'll get there. Either way, in the meanwhile, welcome to the shards of glass that are left behind. Try not to cut yourself.

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 **Chapter 1: The Lily's Sister**

Every mother dreads the knock at the door from uniformed officers. It's a recurrent nightmare, one that comes in the dead of night and haunts me long into the morning. I've imagined their faces, their voices, their sincere sympathy so many times that sometimes it almost takes me by surprise when Dudley hammers down the stairs of a morning demanding bacon. I almost believe the horror of the nightmare.

We nearly lost him last year. Those dementor things that the boy was talking about. I've heard Lily talk about them as well. They suck out souls leaving nothing but the body. Two boys would have been found as good as dead. And there would have been that knock on the door. "We're sorry to have to inform you, Mrs Dursley, but there's been a terrible accident." From then on, the nightmare came more often. Nearly every night. I'd look into the eyes of some kindly policeman and see the face of my dead son. Or worse still.

For some reason it had never had occurred to me that those sorts have the same kind of calls to do.

Of course I knew what they were immediately. You can't mistake the robes and the ridiculous hats are a give-away. I remembered the old man from last year. But the barbed and cutting words that started to bubble up in my throat died when I looked into the faces at my doorstep. Both faces were lined and weathered. Their faces were haggard and there was true grief in both of their eyes. Before either of them said anything I knew, just knew that something horrific must have happened. And whatever it was, I didn't want to hear it. I didn't need to know. I swallowed hard before speaking.

"Is it not enough that I'm stuck with that boy in the holidays?" I bit out sharply, refusing to flinch back at the look in the old man's eyes. "I have no interest in having your kind come and badger me during term time as well."

I tried to close the door in their faces, but it was as if the door hit a solid invisible wall. Neither of them had moved. Neither of them had spoken. I just couldn't close my front door.

"Mrs Dursley," the headmaster spoke and his voice is the voice of my nightmares. Somehow his voice has been etched upon my very memory. Remember my last. The words from an envelope over a year ago. The day I nearly lost my Dudley. "We need to speak to you."

They walked past me, they walked into my own home without permission, and with a wave of a single hand the door slammed shut behind us. Standing in my own doorway, I was left to trail down the hallway and into the living room behind them. There were no niceties said and my throat was suddenly too dry to have offered them drinks even if I had wanted to.

"Mrs Dursley," he repeated my name but then stopped, almost as though he was at a loss for words. His cool blue eyes flickered towards the woman with him, but she didn't meet either of our gazes. "I'm sorry but we've got some terrible news to share with you. Harry Potter… Your nephew…"

"What has the irresponsible boy done now?" I bit out even more sharply than before, as if by making my words as cutting as possible, I could slice through this knot in my chest. "It can't be any worse than the usual."

But of course, it could. Each summer for the last few years, the boy has come back thinner and paler. Each year his nightmares get worse. Each year I shut it off. I never wanted this responsibility, I never wanted to care for him. I never asked for this. He is not my child. He is the child of Lily Damn Potter and her arrogant, offensive and insufferable waste of space of a husband. Every time he came home I saw the pain in his eyes, eyes that look so much like my sisters used to. Every year, that pain seemed to grow exponentially. But he has James Potter's face. And Lily's freakish talent.

"He's dead." The words are torn out of the woman's mouth as if by force and the house seems to shudder with the force of the grief and pain behind them. The pictures on the wall seem to shift slightly and the woman seems to draw herself tightly inward. "Mrs Dursley. Your nephew is dead. You don't have to be 'stuck with him' any longer. He's dead."

More words were said. Of course, more words were said. Few of them stuck with me though. The important ones did. The cutting charm in the middle of the night. The fact that he used that thrice damned freakery to take his own life. That it wasn't the dreaded Lord after all who killed him. The idiot boy did it all to himself. And the note he left. They handed me a copy. Apparently he'd left it on his bed and his roommates found it the following morning. Far too late.

The words that I'll remember though are those two words, said with such grief, such pain, such anguish. He's dead. Behind those words I heard all of the other words that the woman wanted to say. He's dead and it's your fault. He's dead and it's our fault. He's dead and it's my fault. Behind those words, those two simple, single syllable words, I can hear the guilt, the anger, the loathing and the despair. He's dead. He's dead and there is nothing in this universe I can do to bring him back.

I told Vernon that evening. His only words were 'Good riddance to bad rubbish', as he filled his mouth with beef. He didn't even bother to look up. And for a moment, just a flash of a moment, I wanted to scream at him, I wanted to throw his food at him and wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. I wanted to hurt him. But how could I? After all, I'd been no better than he had. I didn't have to take the child in. But I did. And in doing that, I made a choice. A choice I dragged Vernon along into. But a choice.

And so I'm sat in a cupboard of all places. A cupboard under the stairs, the cupboard where a child grew up. The cupboard where he was sent hungry and cold because of his freakishness. The cupboard we determined was a fit space for a young child to live. It's full of Dudley's junk now, piled on the bed and on the floor, but I cleared a space to sit. And I remember Lily's eyes. Those emerald, beautiful, life filled eyes. Those eyes that reminded everyone of Granddad.

Lily's eyes as they flashed with the joy and the wonder of this magical world that she was allowed admittance to and I was forbidden. Lily's eyes as they sparkled with excitement as she showed me her textbooks and her wand, her frantic explanations of everything she'd learned at that freakish school. My little sister, once more better than me. I remember Lily's eyes as she brought home that boy, that arrogant freak, filled with love and adoration. His self-satisfied smile as he looked down on me from on high.

After all, who would have a Petunia when they can have a Lily?

I hated her. I hated her for everything she could have that I couldn't. I hated that she got to see this whole marvellous, magical world that I would never be allowed entry into. I hated that everything was so easy for her. Just a wave of a wand and everything works out all right. Because it was never that easy for me. It was never that easy. I hated her. And I missed her. I missed the smart little girl who looked up to me. Who expected me to have all the answers. Because now I had none of the answers and she had all of them. She had a whole world of answers that I was never, ever going to be able to access. I hated her. I loved her. I hated that I loved her.

Lily's eyes. In James Potter's face. But Lily's eyes. I am never going to see my sister's eyes again. I am never going to see them flash, even if the only times I've seen that lately has been in anger or in fear. I am never going to see the emerald hew that I envied all the way through my childhood. They were yet another thing that Lily had that I didn't. I am never going to see her eyes again. Somehow, despite everything over all these years, that fact is more important than the fact that I will never have to look at James Potter's self-righteous face again.

My shoulders shake once, twice and suddenly I'm crying. I'm crying for a boy I hated. A boy I despised. I'm crying for the child whose life I made a living hell.

"Mum?" Dudley's voice outside the cupboard is filled with bewilderment. "Mum? Are you in the freaks cupboard? Are you crying?"

"I'm ok, Duds," I choke out between sobs, trying to get a handle on my treacherous body. "Everything is ok."

The door opens and my darling son stands framed in the entrance to the cupboard. I can't see his face from my position, he's too tall now and all I can see are his legs and his body. I imagine sitting here as a five-year-old, sitting in exactly this position as my husband screams down into the space. Emerald eyes filled with helpless tears. My shoulders shake uncontrollably. Yet I don't deserve the relief of crying.

"What's happened, Mum?" Dudley's voice is full of concern, of worry. He kneels down in front of the cupboard, his hand outstretched. "Why are you in the cupboard?"

"It's nothing to worry about, Dudders," I manage to say, attempting to smile at my beautiful son. The look in his eyes says I've fooled no one. "Mum's just getting a bit upset about nothing, that's all."

"It's about Harry." He surprises me by saying the boy's name so matter of factly. No scorn or hatred, no fear or anger. Not the freak. Just Harry. "I heard you talking to Dad. Harry's not coming back, is he?"

"No, Duds," I whisper. "Harry's never coming back. He… he…"

"He's dead." He finishes for me, almost calmly. "Was it those… Dementor things. Like before?"

It is so, so unbelievably tempting to lie to my son. To say that yes, something completely outside of our control killed the boy. I even open my mouth to speak the words and then I stop. I can't say them. I just can't. Because whilst there are some truly horrific things in that freakish world, there isn't anything more horrific than what actually killed the boy. Lily trusted me with her son, her bundle of joy. I could have shown him some affection. I could maybe have loved the boy. Perhaps I could have, if he didn't have his father's face and his mother's eyes and every time I looked at him, I saw what I could never be. What I could never have. And I can't tell my son that Dementor's killed his cousin. I can't tell him that it was an evil lord. I can't say that it wasn't our fault.

"No, Dudders." My voice wavers and shakes in a manner most unbecoming of a female. I can't seem to steady it. "No. He… he did it to himself."

"Oh."

That's all my boy says. And then he walks away. I hear his feet as he climbs the stairs and I feel the door as it slams shut behind him. Then silence. Until there's a smashing sound and I jolt upwards, my head hitting against the cupboard roof painfully hard. Climbing out there's another series of crashes, bangs and slams coming from above my head. Unsurprisingly, Vernon hasn't shifted himself to see what is going on. Can't interrupt his TV time, after all.

Following the noises to Dudley's bedroom, I knock at his door. There's no response other than the sounds of something else hitting the wall with velocity. The door shakes with the vibrations.

"Dudders? I'm coming in."

I open the door in trepidation, and look around at the utter carnage of the room. The TV, the consoles, everything I can see is in pieces. And Dudley sits down on the bed and just stares at it. His eyes meet mine and I can't bear the confusion and the pain that I can see in my precious, darling child's eyes. It's almost a mirror image of the pain that I have seen in Lily's emerald eyes for the last few years. That realisation cuts me to the heart. I move to put my arms around my son, but he pushes me away.

"Don't." His voice is gruff and pained. "Please. Don't."

His mouth opens as if to continue and then he shuts it sharply. Sitting down on the bed next to my child, I wait. Dudley was never the most patient of boys. And he can't stand silence.

"I wasn't…" His voice falters and breaks. "I wasn't very nice to him."

"No," I agree softly. "None of us were."

"He saved me. Last year. He saved me even though I was horrible to him." My boy looks up at me and my heart breaks anew. "I never said thank you. I never told him I was grateful. I should have."

"Yes." Once more there is nothing that I can do except agree. "There are lots of things we all should have done. There are lots of things I should have done."

"I think I need to be alone now, Mum."

His voice is soft but sure, more adult than I've heard him before. I nod silently, and back out of the room, closing the door with a soft click behind me.

What more is there to say? What more is there to discuss?

Lily's son. With her bright, sparkling emerald eyes. Eyes that had become dull and pained, tired and weary. James Potter's face. Too thin to be that insufferable gits face though. Too drawn and pale. I don't know what the boy went through these last years. I never bothered to ask. I heard him cry out in his sleep, but I never bothered to ask. _Sirius. Cedric. Don't hurt them. Come back. I love you._ Why didn't I bother to ask?

The boy didn't even mention us in his note. His last words, written in a shaky hand. Tears blotching the letters in random places. Ron, Hermione, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape. Sirius and Cedric. All of those people had a place in his last words. He didn't mention us at all.

I pray that there isn't a heaven or a hell. I pray that there isn't a God. I pray that Lily is dead, that her soul doesn't still exist in some form. Because if she does, one day there is going to be a reckoning. And it doesn't matter what else I do now… I will deserve every last second of it.

I pray that there is an afterlife. I pray that Lily is able to see her son once more, that they have been joined together at last after so many years. I'll take my reckoning. When my day of judgement comes, I won't be judged by any God. I will be judged by my sister. I will be judged my mother and my father. I will stand before them and say, I killed your son. I killed your grandson. I killed my nephew.

I may not have held the knife. I, a mere muggle, may not have been capable of wielding that cutting charm. But that makes me no less responsible.

Walking back down the stairs and into the living room, I almost don't believe the words that come out of my mouth. And yet, they are right. They are the first right thing that I have done in nearly fifteen years.

"Vernon. We're getting a divorce."

There's no invisible wall stopping the door now. It closes with a meaty thunk.


	2. A Father's Sorrow

_This I admit, virtually wrote itself. This is the second in what is clearly to become a series of character portrayals in a variety of formats. This is a sister piece to Giving Up; the look at life where no-one caught the breaking child and now they have to pick up the broken pieces. As said before, this is dark, it is potentially triggering and you have been warned. Also, pretty please REVIEW! My single review is sitting lonesome and it makes me sad. I like reviews. I love reviews. They are the highlight of my weeks and make writing worthwhile. Please review; even if you hate it._

 _And so, with no further ado, welcome to the shards of glass that have been left behind. Try not to cut youself._

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 **Chapter 2: A Father's Sorrow**

Dear Minerva,

It is with a heavy heart that I pen this letter and yet I know that in the penning of it, I show myself to be the greatest coward of all. I should speak to you face to face, I should speak to Albus face to face and yet, I can't. I find myself writing to you instead. Were it Molly in my stead, she would have no issues with marching up to the gates of Hogwarts to face you both down. But Molly hasn't left the house in weeks and so there is no one to shoulder the responsibility for this other than myself. It is not a responsibility I take lightly and it is certainly not one I commit to without grave doubts and hesitation. However, I don't think I have a choice.

I am writing to inform you as Head of Gryffindor House and as Deputy Headmistress that Ginny and Ron won't be returning to Hogwarts this year. They probably won't be returning next year. I don't know if they will ever return. It is hard to see this family of mine that I care for so deeply tearing itself apart at the seams, and yet that is what it is doing. Ron is lost, broken, floundering in a sea of remorse and guilt despite what young Harry's note said. He's not always been the best of friends as teenage boys are wont to be, and that perhaps stabs at him more than anything else. The most heart-breaking thing of all is how he wonders if he could have changed things. If he'd have stood by Harry in the first task of that Triwizard Tournament, if he'd have just thumped Percy for Merlin's sake, if he'd have woken up sooner. If… if… if…So many if's.

But at the end of the day, there are no if's that matter anymore are there? Harry is gone, by his own choice and his own hand, with no-one there beside him to watch him leave us. And my boy is breaking. His heart, his soul, his mind is breaking. I can't expect him to go back to the dormitory where his best friend left the last words he would ever write. I can't expect him to walk those hallways and those corridors or sit in the classes that he should be sitting in with Harry. I can't do that to my boy, Minerva. I just can't. Maybe Molly could. She always was firmer than me, stronger than me. Me? I just want my boy to stop hurting. And returning to Hogwarts will hurt him more than anything I can think of right now.

Is it a curse of mine to watch my children break? Ron is the second, you know. And I'm even more helpless now than I was with Percy, because this time it isn't my fault. I wasn't the one who broke Ron, it wasn't my words that pushed him to this juncture. No. It was a boy I loved as a son, who I would have taken in as one of my own. I tried, you know. I tried to get Albus to let young Harry stay here more often. I know Molly tried. Molly pushed even harder than I did. But we didn't know enough, we weren't well enough informed, it was for the child's own safety that he had to stay with those relatives. His safety.

Did he tell you about the bars, Minerva? The bars that my sons pulled out of his window when Harry was twelve years old? My thoughtless, reckless and utterly irresponsible sons who should have known better. Did you know that my boys flew a car out to Privet Drive in the middle of the night to rescue my Harry James Potter? It was the first time I'd seen the boy. Fred and George told me and I thought they were making it up, trying to get out of trouble. I thought they were exaggerating. I asked Ron last week. They weren't making it up, Minerva. The muggles put bars on my surrogate son's window. The barred his door and they put food through a flap that they use to feed animals through. Animals. He was twelve years old.

Did he tell you about the cupboard, Minerva? The cupboard that he grew up in despite those relatives having a spare bedroom? The cupboard under the stairs that his Hogwarts letter was addressed to? Ron was the one who mentioned that to us. Molly took it up with Albus and he said he had handled it. I don't know how those relatives of his managed to raise a boy with such kindness of spirit, such gentleness of heart and yet with such a fierce, protective nature, I really don't. He should never have turned out the way he has. By all rights and purposes he should have been bitter, callous, cruel even. Not kind, considerate and humble. I could go on, but I'm too tired. I'm too tired to even be angry anymore.

I think you loved the boy, Minerva. I think you loved him as Lily and James' son. You may even have loved him for his brash, reckless, irrepressible nature. Or perhaps for his gentle, caring and self-sacrificing attitude. I truly do believe that you loved the boy. And I believe you are mourning for him. But I have to wonder if you ever bothered to know the boy. Truly, fully know him. Because I don't think that he was brash, reckless and irresponsible because he was a typical Gryffindor. Molly and I, we've had many discussions about our Harry over the years, but it is only now that we have come to understand that he truly never realised how much he was actually worth.

Harry never learned to mindlessly respect authority because the authority he grew up with was cruel and pointlessly, randomly unfair. He learned to obey in sight because that was safe. But he learned to do his homework by torchlight under his duvet because his relatives wouldn't let him do it in the day. He learned to sneak around, to hide from them and to find ways around authority, because authority has never been fair. Authority has never been just to him. Authority has never been even handed. And I have to wonder whether Hogwarts showed him anything different really. Was authority ever fair? Did punishments fall upon those who deserved them? Were Hogwarts Professors permitted to bully students within their own classrooms? I think you know the answers to those questions as well as I do.

But more importantly, how often did Harry sacrifice something; his choice, his freedom, his very life, for someone else? For the school, for Hagrid, for my daughter, for my son, for a girl who he didn't even like very much at the time but later became his best friend, for a mass-murderer on the run from Azkaban. For the sister of a foreign girl on the opposing team to himself. For Cedric. For Cedric's father. For Sirius. When did he ever do anything for himself? When he did, he killed himself. What does that say about his self-worth? All these times we celebrated his bravery or berated his reckless attitude, did any one of us ever take him to one side and ask him why? Did any one of us explain to him that it wasn't his job to save the world? That the adults would look after him?

But honestly, Minerva, I think Hogwarts has failed my children badly. Perhaps Molly and I need to take a level of responsibility here as well, but I don't think anyone could argue that Hogwarts has not been a safe and secure home for my four youngest children. The twins perhaps are a rule unto themselves, but this time I think they had the right idea last year. Hogwarts was not safe for my children and they were right to leave it behind. Hogwarts hadn't been safe for quite some time. How many disasters have my children so narrowly dodged over the years? They courted death no less than three times in their first year alone to hear Ron tell the tales now.

Tales told through butterbeer, tears and when Molly's not around, a touch of firewhiskey. After the first evening, I have tried to avoid Molly being around if I'm honest, Minerva. If she knew a fraction of the danger our boys had been exposed to these last few years… I thought the Triwizard Championship was bad enough. If it had been Ron exposed to a Hungarian Horntail, you'd better believe that he'd have been out of Hogwarts faster than you could say fire whiskey, let alone drink it. We said then, you remember. We argued for Harry. But Albus knew better. And so he had to face up to the challenges alone.

And because of that, my little boy is breaking. Oh, I know, my Ronniekins isn't so little anymore. But he'll always be my little boy. All of them will be. That is the curse and the joy of fatherhood. I get to see these wonderful boys grow into fantastic young men and yet they are always my babies. And he is falling apart. His whole world has come apart at the seams because his whole life revolved around Harry. From the day he met Harry, Ron couldn't talk about anyone else. He used to write home. Sporadically, but he'd write. And it was always Harry this, Harry that. Since that fateful train ride six years ago, they have been closer than brothers, and brothers are something I know quite a lot about. I have enough sons to be quite the expert on the matter. Harry and Ron were as close as Fred and George most of the time. They were twins in all but name, birthday and mother. We'd have fixed the latter for them, if we'd have been permitted.

Of course, at times, Ron has been resentful of his best friend. At times he thought he hated him. Because wherever Harry was, Ron walked in his shadow. Harry shone with a light that Ron could never rival. He was always the side-kick and never the hero. Always the backup. Never the centre of the story. And that stung his pride. Just like Harry's wealth did. The fact that Harry could throw galleons around and barely notice and Ron, well, couldn't. None of us can. I've never been successful enough and we have far too many children to ever be rich. And that stings Ron more than it stings any of my other children. Harry seemed to have so much, so easily that Ron had to work for; the fame, the love, the wealth. It's natural for a teenage boy to be jealous of that kind of attention.

But you see, now that Harry isn't here, Ron is constantly in the shadows of an absence of light. An utter absence of Harry. It's as if the very sun has been swallowed leaving only darkness in its wake. He still talks to Harry, you know. He mutters or makes wise-crack remarks and waits for the resulting snicker and I watch his face fall when he remembers it isn't coming. He saves things to share with his best friend instinctively. Ron talks to him as if he was there because Harry is the only person my son knows how to talk to. He stopped talking to me and Molly years ago. Losing Harry has left a gigantic hole in his chest and I don't know if it is ever going to heal. I don't know if it ever can.

Losing Harry has left a gigantic hole in my entire family, not just Ron. Harry saved my baby girl, he saved my life, he defended the honour of my family. Harry became a member of my family. That is something that can never change. I am honoured that he chose my family to love, to trust, to come to. I am so grateful for that love, and not only because over the course of the last six years he's saved more of my family than should be possible. I wish we'd been able to keep his love and his friendship longer. I wish he wasn't gone and not just for Ron. I wish I had been there for him. I wish he felt able to reach out to me. Reach out to Molly. Reach out to anyone.

We'd have been by his side in a heartbeat had he asked us to. We owe our lives, our family to that boy and that was a debt that never could have been repaid. I had looked forward to the day when I would welcome him into the family formally, the day when he would walk down the aisle with my baby girl. But even without that, Harry was already like family to me. He was already as much a son as my own sons. And so my children have not just lost their love or their best friend, they are mourning the loss of a brother. To have lost him in this way, to his own hand, is almost a burden too much for them to bear.

At the end of the day, I cannot know what made a child I loved as a son choose that hopeless, final act. I have no way of knowing what thoughts were going through his head. All I can think of is how alone he must have felt. How bitterly, helplessly alone he must have felt as he wrote those final words. I haven't seen the note. But my Ron recited it to me. From memory. Tears streaming down his face, voice cracking under the pressure and the strain, eyes filled with grief, pain and shame he recited it to me from memory, Minerva. How many times has my boy read that final letter to be able to do that? Or is it simply that the sight of it has burned its way into his very mind and soul? The last words of his dearest, most precious friend.

Ron will never hate Harry, you know. Not even after this. Not even now, when his heart has all but been pulled out of his chest and carved into pieces. The time they spent together will be forever engraved in my boys heart, forever enshrined upon his mind. In time maybe the sharpest, the most jagged edges of his pain will wear away, maybe he won't cut himself so easily on the cruel fragments of his memories. That time isn't now though. It won't be tomorrow, it won't be next week, it won't even be next month. And I am going to give my son room to mourn, to grieve and to feel whatever he needs to feel. I will let no man take any more from my boy. Not while I am still breathing.

So I'm sorry, Minerva. I'm sorry that I have not the courage to say these words to your face. But Ron will not be returning to Hogwarts and neither will Ginny. I do not trust Hogwarts to keep them safe. I just wish that I had done this last year. I wish we had taken this step then and perhaps avoided all that has befallen us since. I wish beyond all wishes that I had spoken to the boy last summer; any fool could see how much he was struggling. I wish I had not assumed that Albus or you had it all in hand.

I wish things had turned out differently. However, the time for wishing is past. The time for action is here. And now, I must act. I must protect my children as I have failed to do thus far. Hogwarts will take no more from them.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Weasley


	3. A Tincture of Poppy

_Apologies for my overwhelming slowness in all things related to fanfiction. That seems to spread out to life in general at the moment. New anti-depressants stole my writing mojo and ran away to the hills far yonder with it so nothing has happened quickly. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things._

 _This is a sister piece to Giving Up; a 'what if' they hadn't found the breaking child in time and now everyone has to pick up the pieces that are left behind. You are warned; this is dark, potentially triggering. Please review though, even if you hate it with a passion. I like hearing what you think... And it gives me motive and mojo to keep on writing, however slowly that might occur._

 _And so, with no further ado, welcome to the shards of glass that have been left behind. Try not to cut yourself._

* * *

 **Chapter 3: A Tincture of Poppy**

The Hospital Wing is completely out of Calming Drafts. There are three vials of Dreamless Sleep left and a half dozen Tinctures of Poppy and a various selection of infusions. At the rate we are going, I'm going to be reduced to Cheering Charms.

I have never known anything like it. Even when there was a Basilisk roaming the walls and petrifying students randomly, I never had quite a run like this on my stocks. I have Severus making up extra batches as I speak because my order isn't going to come in until the end of the week. At the earliest apparently. The nation has run dry of Calming Drafts.

All because the Boy-Who-Lived has died.

Of all the students to die on my watch, it just had to be Harry James Potter.

A faint sobbing from outside gets closer to my doors and it's with a heavy heart that I turn to deal with yet another distraught and overcome student. I do have to wonder that if anywhere near as many of these devastated young fans had showed Potter this level of appreciation over the last couple of years, if we'd be standing at this point today. However, it is not my job to question. My job to fix, heal, mend and send my young charges away in fine health. I've failed one boy but that is no reason to fail those who remain.

The youngster is led in by Minerva, and it is no secret I am getting more concerned about her with every day that passes. She's been a tower of strength for students of her own house and even those from other houses, but with each day she seems to grow thinner and greyer. Even more so than Albus perhaps, she has grown old. She hasn't chosen to confide in me but I've known the woman for too many years not to see the real toll the death of her student has had on her. I saw the façade crack when we found the boy's body but otherwise she might have been of stone. Except stone doesn't wither away day by day. Stone isn't as frail as us mere mortals. It is frailty that I can see now.

For the moment though, it is easier to focus on the hysterical first year student than my all too composed colleague. There's more I can do for Miss Adams, at least immediately. There is also less chance of getting my nose hexed sideways. I don't trust Minerva's temper these days. But calming infusions don't take long to make or to administer and within an all too short period of time I've got a relatively calm first year…and the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts who seems determined to fall apart where no-one can hear her cry. Determined to fall apart where no-one will be there to catch her.

Looking across at my colleague speculatively, her attention is fully taken by the steadily calming first year sat on the bed although Miss Adams is doesn't look up to notice. However, looking closely I can see the new strain lines that show on my colleague's face, the dark bags under her eyes and the now sharp lines of her face. She doesn't meet my eyes but I know what I'd see in her gaze all too well; grief, heart-ache, sorrow and despair. Guilt. Shame. And fear. So many emotions all contained in those dark green eyes, all held constrained by an iron clad will.

She's seen each and every one of these children through their own personal hell these past few weeks and she has done it completely alone completely alone. She's held them as they cried, heard their anguished guilt, supported them through their guilt, their horror, their unimaginable anguish. Not that there haven't been those of us offering help, offering support, offering a shoulder to cry on. Myself, Filius, Horace, even Severus in his own inexplicable way. Yet, she has pushed those of us willing to support her away and so she has done it all alone.

"Minerva," I start stridently, not allowing any of my insecurity into my tone. Minerva could hex me across the room with virtually no effort and we both know it. I may be the master of this domain, but Minerva is not one of my charges. I have to step with care. "Would you step into my office, please?"

Her glance is sharp and short and I can see that she's about to rebuff me, to walk out with a vague comment and a generalisation.

"It's about one of your students, Minerva," I follow with before she can say anything else. Those green eyes meet mine suddenly, her gaze focussed and intent. "There's someone I'm concerned about."

There's no word of a lie in either of those statements. It is about one of her students. Harry was one of her students and always will be unless I miss my guess. And there is someone that I'm concerned about. It is merely that she is standing in front of me looking more world worn and haggard than I have seen in many years of working closely at her side. Of course there are other students I am concerned about; the sixth year Gryffindors have taken the harshest beating from this; Longbottom, Granger and Weasley in particular. They aren't the only ones though; the Lovegood girl seems to have stepped even further off whatever little sanity she had before and is now living in her own little world. I don't have it in me to try to bring her back yet. I just hope she can find some solace there that she cannot find here.

Without even thinking, I set two highly sugared cups of tea in front of us. I know all too well that Minerva doesn't take sugar in her tea, but at least I can be certain of some sustenance, regardless of how minimal.

"Minerva, surely you have to recognise that this isn't healthy?" I don't bother to beat around the bush. Some people respond best to a softly, softly tickle a dragon approach. With Minerva I long ago discovered that you are far better off sticking your head into the fire and just hoping for the best. "You need to talk to someone. If not me then…"

"Poppy…" Her voice is stern and yet I can hear the tiredness that edges it. She takes a deep breath and stands as if to leave. "I thought this was to do with one of my students."

"Sit down, Minerva." I wince at the unexpected sharpness in my own tone. Minerva isn't one of the students and I cannot treat her like one, but worry and concern makes me harsher than I had actually intended. "Please. Sit down. You can't be there for the students who need you properly like this, Minerva. It's not fair on them and it's not fair on you. It's not fair on anybody. None of this is. But you can't take it all upon yourself. Your shoulders are not wide enough for that kind of burden. Nobody's are."

After a long moment, my older colleague sits down; slowly and stiffly, a movement that fits the new lines on her face more than her actual years. Without saying a word, she holds a piece of parchment out to me, the quaver of her hand only noticeable to one who has been trained to see. I scroll down it quickly, flick my eyes back up and run down it more carefully, barely believing what I'm reading. I would never have thought that Arthur would pull his children from the school. I'd never realised just how much the child had hidden from us. Bars on the windows.

Minerva hasn't just lost one of her boys. She's lost three of her pride of young lions in the same foul swoop. She isn't just hurting, she is breaking.

"Minerva…" I start slowly, my heart shattering into pieces for this proud, stern woman who is watching everything she has built turn to ash. Her boys. Her self-worth. Her faith not only in herself but also in Albus, in Hogwarts, in the foundations of her life. "You can't just blame yourself, you know. Arthur is in many ways right; we could all have done so much more."

"In the boy's first year, he came to me for help and I sent him away with a flea in his ear…" Minerva's voice when it finally comes is hoarse, weary and grief-stricken and she won't meet my eyes. These are words that have been circling in her head since the day we found the child, this is what has been eating her alive. "Second year, one best friend petrified and the others youngest sister taken to a chamber of horrors, he risks a Basilisk alone. After being reviled for being a Parseltongue and isolated by the entire school no less, whilst I stood by and did sweet nothing. He walks into my office waving a dripping sword that's almost as big as he is tightly clutching a young girl we as the responsible adults had all given up as lost. Two twelve year old children found the Chamber of Secrets and took on a basilisk on their own!"

I hardly dare move, I certainly don't dare speak. Minerva has barely spoken to anyone since we found the young Potter boys body. She has confided in nobody. She has stayed strong and stern, refusing to break, refusing to bend. We all knew how much she must be grieving. We all knew how much she must blame herself. And yet she wouldn't let any of us close enough to share that pain with her. She has held herself aloft. Until now. There is anger in her clipped tone, there is pain and there is hatred and there is grief in that voice which finally cracks under the strain of these last few weeks.

"Third year…" Finally this steadfast colleague of mine meets my gaze with her dark green eyes and I near stop breathing at the pain residing within them. The guilt, the hurt, the devastation. This is what she has been hiding. This is what she hasn't allowed any of us to see. "Third year that irrepressible and kind-hearted young man was the only one willing to listen, to give the man he believed killed his parents the chance to explain and to make things right. Reckless, potentially fatal, utterly stupid behaviour that put himself and his friends in danger and yet because of it, he saved an innocent man's life, Poppy. A man we would have handed over to the Dementor's without even blinking."

I don't have many portraits on the walls of my office; one of my father and another of my mentor. Neither of them shift easily and yet with the force of the power shaking them near off the walls, both vanish without a word, likely into the Hospital Wing itself. Minerva hasn't touched her wand, doesn't even seem to realise the shock waves of power that are breaking from her. Magic is always more powerful when propelled by strong emotion; Minerva knows that as well as anyone. It was the force of her grief and heart-break that brought the walls of the Room of Requirement down. It is that force now that she is tapping into, utterly unaware of it in her misery. This isn't something I have any right or ability to stop. Unless it is tapped, Minerva could potentially lay waste to a wing or more of Hogwarts and none but Albus himself could hope to mitigate the damage. Or perhaps Severus. That man has hidden talents that surprise even me occasionally.

"For three years, Poppy, my boy somehow managed the unlikely, the improbable, and the downright dangerously impossible. Regardless of his age, his inexperience, his relatives. Despite all of the things that should have changed him, stopped him, warped him. Despite everything…" Here, her voice truly cracks. I saw Minerva cry when we found young Harry's body. I watched helplessly as tears tracked down her face and the walls crumbled around us into rubble because nobody can bring back the dead. I thought that was terrifying. Nothing can prepare me for the sight of my old colleague now though. Her voice is harsh through her sobs. "How did I not see it sooner, Poppy? The boy darted from one narrow escape to another, somehow always managing to come out with his head held high. Surely, I should have seen… Surely, I could have done something…"

There's nothing I can say. There's absolutely nothing I can say that would make Minerva feel better right now, because she's right. We all should have seen. We all could have done something and yet none of us actually did. We let the child alone to try to live up to the near impossible expectations that the world had for him. And when he inevitably fell short, as he always had to as the standards were so high, when the wizarding world deserted him, who stood by him? Who could the child rely on?

"And then he was placed besides adolescents several years older and told to compete. And then Cedric died and everything fell apart, the world bayed for the boy's blood and he believed he was the only one who could save Sirius by running in half cocked…" Once again, Minerva's voice cracks and falters. I've heard the muggleborn use the phrase drawing blood from a stone, I've never understood what it meant but this must surely be close. "He must have felt so alone, Poppy. So utterly, completely alone. And even then he spends his last words telling us it's not our fault. Not to blame ourselves. He'd come through so much. How can I look at the faces around me and not see the broken, bleeding child that I failed so badly, Poppy?"

"Harry was never alone, Minerva," I say softly, gently. "He might have felt it, but if he'd have come to you…"

"He did, Poppy!" The cracks and crashes around us are testament to this woman's sheer will. The slight whoosh of my floo sounds but I don't bother to turn and for once Minerva doesn't seem to notice. There aren't many who can come straight through to my office, although anyone has access to the Hospital Wing itself. I can't see any reason for Albus to be gracing me with his presence, so the options are limited. "He came to me about the stone, he tried to talk to me about Sirius, he even tried to talk to me about Umbridge making him carve lines into the back of his own hand! Throughout all these years, Poppy, the boy tried to come to me. So when he really, truly needed someone there for him, is it really any shock that he didn't see my door as open? That he didn't trust me enough to confide in? That he didn't think I cared enough to help him? How could he!? Arthur is right! He thought he had to be self-sufficient. When he cried, he cried alone. When he bled, he bled alone. When he died…"

She doesn't have to finish the sentence. He died alone. He cut his own wrists in the dead of night. He bled out and died without anyone even realising there was a problem. By the time the Gryffindor boys woke up to that empty bed and tear marked parchment, it was far, far too late. In a castle full of people who would have died for him, the child died painfully alone. There isn't anything I can say to right that wrong. There isn't anything I can say to smooth over the wounds that his death has left. Arthur is right; in time, perhaps these cruelly sharp edges will become blunt and we'll be able to think about the boy without it hurting quite so much. But for now, and for a long time to come, Ronald isn't the only one who is going to cut himself on the jaded fragments of his memories.

"He died alone, Minerva, with no one beside him."

Minerva stands and whirls around to find Severus standing at my shoulder, he'd moved so quietly even I hadn't heard him approaching across the room. For an instant there's rage in her eyes, but it vanishes as quickly as it came and she sinks brokenly back into the chair. Severus steps gently behind her, laying a thin pale hand on her shoulder with more compassion than I thought the younger man was capable of. His dark, hooded eyes meet mine for a moment and in that look I can read more than I am comfortable with. Guilt, grief, fear and somehow, gratitude.

He knew as well as I did that someone had to approach Minerva. Someone had to break her barriers down. If I hadn't done it today, he likely would have tomorrow, next week or next month. And would likely have found himself being hexed sideways for his trouble. But even knowing that, he would have tried. At the touch of the younger mans hand on her shoulder, Minerva seems to steel herself once more and makes as if to stand yet the firm pressure he exerts prevents her from doing so.

"We failed him, Minerva." Severus continues softly, his tone at odds with the harsh words. "We both failed Lily's son. And he died alone and afraid, haunted by his grief and his shame. Whether we saw James' face or Lily's nature, we both failed him."

Minerva seems to crumple in her chair and I leave the room quietly, letting Severus take this in hand. Passing the floo, I pick up the container that Severus has dropped to the side. A re-stock of Calming Drafts and Dreamless Sleep if my guess is correct. He must have worked through the night to get them ready for now. His voice is low and quiet and once a few steps away it is difficult to make out more than the odd word. I'd swear I hear something about other students though. I close the door quietly behind me.

Miss Adams is still on the bed, fast asleep now.

But I've caught sight of a very pale Mister Longbottom staggering past the Hospital Wing. There are other students left indeed. Some in need of more help than others.

I step outside to follow the young man briskly. I'm not letting another one slip through my fingers.


	4. A Little Less Good

_Thank you to those of you who have so kindly reviewed this for me; every review means a huge amount, particularly on a fic like this which gets so few in comparison to more 'mainstream' fics like I Did Nothing. As with the previous chapter, this took a while to write so thank you for your patience, those of you who are still with me! Please review; reviews make my day, my week and give me mojo to continue with writing._

 _As with the previous chapters, this is dark and potentially triggering. It's a strange sensation to sift through the brokenness of characters like this, but what you've got here is a heart-felt look at the shards of glass that are left behind in the wake of tragedy._

 _Try not to cut yourself._

* * *

 **Chapter 4: A Little Less Good**

The good die young, they reckon. That's what they tell me at least. It's of precious little comfort though. I'd give anything to have my boy back. My son. My boy. My child. What's the point of being good if it means you don't even make it to graduation? If your life is thrown away before you've ever had a chance to shine? The good die young and it's supposed to be a consolation. How in Merlin's name is it meant to be any consolation whatsoever? What good is to me that my boy was stolen from me? Nothing they say can bring him back and their false platitudes and inane condolences are useless.

You don't expect to have to bury your own child.

The good die young.

What does that say about Harry Potter, then?

I wanted to hate the boy you know. I wanted to hate him for not being the spare. For being the one they cared about. For not just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For coming back alive when my precious boy was dead. I wanted so badly to hate him. But I couldn't. Potter didn't kill Cedric. He didn't kill my brave, beautiful son. Those monsters killed my son. And I can't hate the boy who brought my sons body back to me. I can't hate the boy who looked me in the eye and told me that he couldn't leave my child's body in that place.

My son. My boy. My boy.

My son. The spare.

Without Harry Potter, he wouldn't have been the spare. He'd have won the tournament, he'd have got the prize money and he'd have come home. Screw the money. He'd have come home. I would still have my boy. I wouldn't be sat here, in my dear Cedric's room still unchanged over a year later, drinking fire whiskey on my own trying not to think of the boy who didn't kill my son. Kill the spare, they said. My child, my boy, my joy and my pride reduced to those two careless words. That complete dismissal of his intelligence, his spark, his talents and his abilities. Killed because he wasn't Harry Potter.

My son. My boy. My boy.

I was so angry for so long. I was furious in my heart-break. I wanted to rage, I wanted to scream, I wanted to bellow. But I couldn't hate the Potter boy. I couldn't be angry at him. In the minutes that became hours that became days… I couldn't hate him. Even when I wanted to. I couldn't even do anything about those I was truly furious with though and that knowledge made everything worse. I couldn't do anything about the Ministry even when they closed down all lines of communication and refused to accept the blatantly obvious truth, that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned; instead spreading propaganda and lies about the tragic accident and my son's death. We all knew that it was no accident. There's only one curse that kills like that. One curse with its flash of green light. What accident causes that?

I couldn't do anything about Dumbledore, even though he'd had a Death Eater walking around his school for a whole year, even though he was meant to be close friends with the man that Death Eater was impersonating, even though he is meant to be infallible. Without that, none of this would have happened, Harry Potter would never have been in that thrice damned tournament and my boy would have been working towards graduating Hogwarts right now with a fine career and future ahead of him. I couldn't do anything about the Death Eaters who stole my son from me in his prime. There was nothing I could do about any of the things that mattered. And so I did nothing. I sank into a bottle of fire whiskey and let it carry me away somewhere a little less painful, a little less real, a little less… sharp.

The good die young, so they say.

Does it still count when you take your life by your own hand? Are the false platitudes still mouthed when it was your own choice and your own wand? Or are eyes just averted instead? The silence left to grow until it is uncomfortable and tight, nobody sure what can be said, what can be done, because what can be done when a child throws their life away? The death of the young is always accompanied by the terrible silences, the discomfort, the uncertainly of what to say next. But this isn't going to go away, this isn't going to fade into the distance for everyone but the immediate friends and family, because the Boy Who Lived is now the Boy Who Died. The Boy Who Killed Himself.

When my boy was killed, friends, family and colleagues all disappeared from our lives once the obligatory consoling messages and hearty stews had been dispensed with. Our grief was so pervasive that it was as if might infect others and drag them down to our level, it might rub off on them. I felt like screaming that the house wasn't infectious for Merlin's sake. That Cedric had been murdered and it was so very much more dangerous for them to not realise that the Dark Lord was back, that the nightmare had returned, that my boy was only ever going to be the first. The first in a line that is going to be horrifically long before this is over. And Cedric was killed. The Potter boy…

My boy. My son. My boy.

He offered us the prize money, you know. Said that we should have it. That Cedric deserved it. Said that Cedric was brave, honourable and loyal to the end, that we should be proud of him. As if we could ever not be proud of our precious boy. As if that even needed saying. Cedric's shade protected him at the last, asked him to bring his body back to us, and the boy did it. He brought my son's body back to me so that we could see him a final time before we buried him, kiss his brow and close his eyes as if he were merely sleeping and not gone forever. In the face of death, the child had enough compassion and respect to bring my boy home to me. That's more than most adults could boast. He didn't just turn and run. He didn't just save himself. He brought my boy's lifeless body back to me and he offered us the prize money.

What use was the prize money, though? What use was the prize money when my pride and joy was lying lifeless on the floor in front of me? What could I do with the money? It wouldn't bring Cedric back. It couldn't bring my boy back to me. No amount of Galleons in the world could bring my boy back to me. It couldn't turn back time. Of course Cedric would have done the same if it had been the other round. If he'd have been standing in front of young Potter's relatives it would have been the first thing he did. Of course I know that. I wouldn't have had my boy any other way. The good die young.

War takes indiscriminately. The good, the bad, the ugly. My Cedric was just the first shot.

I stopped drinking eight months after my boy was killed. I looked into my wife's eyes and saw my reflection gazing back at me. A man I didn't know. A man I didn't want to know. A man so lost in his own grief and misery that he had forgotten what was still there for him, who was still standing by his side. I threw the bottles out. Smashed them on the ground outside and cried not only for Cedric, but also for my wife who had lost not only her son but also her husband. I took in deep gasping breaths as her arms wound their way around me, holding me with the same gentleness she always has, the lines of grief no less stark on her face than on my own.

I find myself reaching for the bottle of fire whiskey now for the third night in a row though, as I stare into the embers of a fire that is slowly burning out. The fire reflects my heart right now. Once aflame and blazing with pride, energy and passion… now reduced to the lingering embers and ashes of what was once, now past. My hand shakes slightly as I top up my glass, staring greedily into the amber liquid that became my haven and then the route to my own destruction. After everything that happened, after losing my boy, after so much pain and grief and heartache that the boy who came home from that graveyard was not my son… Potter is dead. By his own wand, his own hand, his own choice.

I want to scream, I want to scream to the heavens and beyond that if Potter wanted to die so badly then why didn't he do it in the graveyard!? Why did the wrong boy come home from that place? Why would the child who survived throw away the chance that he had been offered? The chance that my precious boy didn't have. I want to howl, to scream, to rage and yet that would be unfair and so instead I refill my glass and gaze down into its amber depths. My Cedric had so much more to offer, so much that was stolen from him that day. But so did Potter. Cedric's chances were stolen from him by an evil beyond most of our incomprehension. Potter though… he threw them away himself.

Potter threw himself away.

What's good in such a waste? Where is the good in that? What good could come from such waste?

How alone must that child have felt to take his own life in such a desperate manner? He didn't have the comfort of a bottle of fire whiskey to drown himself in. He had nothing except his grief, his guilt, his fear and the expectations that our world laid on his shoulders. The Chosen One they started calling him. But who did he have to cry to? Whose shoulder was made wet with his tears? Whose ear heard his fears and his pain? Who did he turn to when the world turned to him as the saviour, the last hope? I know my boy would have been able to come home to me or go to Pomona or any one of the support network he had surrounding him during the tournament. The girlfriend even. But who could Potter turn to?

Did he have anyone? Or did he push everyone so far away in his anger and his self-hatred that when it came down to the last, he had no one to turn to at all? In the very bottom of the bottles of fire whiskey, on the darkest of days in the wake of my Cedric's death my thoughts turned to joining my boy. Whose wouldn't? With a lifetime of experience behind me, with all of the jagged cracks and tears of the past in my repertoire, as an adult with people all around me, I wanted to give in. I was so tempted sometimes. So very tempted. And yet, I could imagine what my dear boy would say to me. How disappointed he'd be that I left his mother on her own. What did Potter have to imagine? Who did he have to turn to?

The good die young they say… so why was nobody watching when two of the best where taken from us? Why was nobody there to stop it?

Why was my boy allowed to die in a derelict graveyard, surrounded by mocking faces hidden behind masks?

Why was the Boy-Who-Lived left to take his own life, drain his lifeblood away in pain, fear, guilt and helpless despair?

If the young who die were so good, why was nobody watching out for them?

The good die young they say…

I wish my boy, my son, my boy had been a little less good. A little less brave. A little less fair.

And Potter…

If he'd have been less fair, he'd have gone to the graveyard alone, they wouldn't have taken that cup together. If he'd been less honourable, he wouldn't have told my boy about the dragons. If he'd been less ridiculously selfless, he wouldn't have stayed behind at the bottom of that lake.

If he'd been less … less of … Lily Evans son, everything could have been so different.

I hope that boy is with his mother now. I hope his family surrounds him tightly, holding him as closely as they should have been able to in life. I hope he has finally found somewhere he belongs.

And maybe, just maybe, my precious boy, my beautiful son is standing there with him.

Somewhere far from pain and grief, those two boys, two lives taken too soon are looking down and waiting for those they loved to join them.


	5. Faces Behind the Facades

_Thank you again to all those who have reviewed; I understand that this is not exactly a piece of writing for everyone and truly do appreciate the kind words of those of you who are interested in reading it. I actually more or less wrote the next chapter first, which is why this one took so long to piece together; so with any luck chapter 6 won't be far behind._

 _As with the previous chapters, this is dark and potentially triggering. It's quite unnerving to play with the brokenness of so many different characters like this, but the result is a heart-felt depiction of the glass shards left behind by suicide. The cries unheard and the tears shed alone._

 _Try not to cut yourself._

* * *

 **Chapter 5; Faces Behind the Facades**

I wonder if this is how so many of them who fought in the last war felt, as they began each meeting with fewer faces each time. Fewer familiar faces at the table and far fewer smiles. Grimmer faces and lines of mourning etched deeply on so many faces. Silences where once there was laughter and unshed tears where once there would have been joy. And of course, the unmistakable sense of grief, loss and an underlining tension and guilt that hangs so heavy in the air that I can almost taste it.

I'm good at reading other people, in a way that very few people seem to even care about, let alone understand. You can tell so much about what someone else is thinking, feeling and even about to do just by watching them closely, but near enough everyone else is all too obsessed with themselves. It's always come naturally to me though, even as a young child I was able to pick up all those subtle hints and emotions that adults never seemed to say. It wasn't really even until I got to Hogwarts that I realised it was strange and unnerving to others.

Maybe it is the fact that I'm a Metamorphmagus that has allowed me this additional insight into those around me. What with the pink hair and animal faces, most people think that it's all just fun and games and I'm not going to disillusion them. What they don't realise is that it's not enough to just change your appearance, you have to be able to actually become a completely different person. The only way to do that is to change your very mannerisms and so I watch, I study and I inspect other people. I read them, find the tells, the clues and the bodily tics that make them unique and distinctive, even from a distance. All the facades that are worn, I learned that they are really just masks, and like masks they can be seen through.

Mad-Eye, for example, with that bright blue eye that can see right through you even as he rolls it to the back of his head, carries an unmistakable aura of power and threat around him in everything he does. You can't look at him without seeing the Auror and the warrior there, lying not so far beneath the surface, menace lurking in his every movement. Yet much of that is a front. It goes without saying that he has the power and he has the ability, but underneath that scarred and hardened vista is a heart of gold. It might take a fair bit of mining to get to it, but it's there. I first noticed it around the Weasley twins and then around Harry Potter… so very many people showed a different side around Harry.

Only now, sat across the table from me, his shoulders are hunched, brow furrowed and everything around him is just tight, I suppose. Mad-Eye isn't somebody you want to get on the wrong side of under any circumstances, but I'd never bother tip-toeing around him. Now though… something about how everything is coiled up so tightly within him makes me exceptionally wary. For once, I can't read him and that worries me in and of itself. I can't tell if it's anger that is being kept so brutally under the surface, if it's grief or even fear. I couldn't tell you for certain, I just know it's there. It's there and it's breaking off him with an intensity that even a muggle could notice.

The floo fires and Arthur Weasley virtually topples out of it, his face grey and strained, his lips tightly pursed together as he seats himself stiffly at the table. I know for a fact that he is all but a stripling in comparison to the others at this table tonight, but I almost expect to hear his bones creak and groan, he looks so much older than his years. It's strange. Arthur's arrival makes for five of us at the table. Many I would have expected to be here are absent. Five for a meeting of the Order? I know we are waiting for Albus, making it six, but even then this will be the smallest Order meeting I have ever attended. I'll freely admit that I'm fairly new to this game, but that total seems rather miserable, particularly when one of them is Mundungus and he's clearly not here of his own free will.

Nobody moves, nobody speaks; nobody makes any effort to break the silence that gathers and builds around those present. Mad-Eye grunted at me as I came in. Mundungus grimaced. But Minerva didn't even look up from the table to greet me, just like she makes no effort to meet Arthur's pale gaze. That said, Arthur seems to be making a concerted effort to look at anyone but Minerva which is interesting. Or at least it would be interesting, but in this room of silent tension, it seems almost sacrilegious to feel an emotion as trivial as curiosity. Not that such things have ever really stopped me.

Part of me wants to break the ice in some ridiculously inappropriate manner; a set of long floppy ears or overgrown tusks for example. Something holds me back though. Maybe it's simply that I can't imagine it would help. It certainly won't bring young Harry back to us and I think that's the only thing that could change the atmosphere here right now. Glancing sideways at Minerva, I can see the new strain lines that show on her face, the dark bags lingering beneath her eyes and the all too sharp lines of her face. She doesn't meet my eyes but I suspect that I already know what I'd see in her gaze all too well; grief, heart-ache, sorrow and despair. Guilt. Shame. So many emotions all contained in those dark green eyes, all held constrained by an iron clad will.

This hasn't been easy on anybody, but Minerva least of all. It doesn't matter how many times her colleagues and friends tell her that it isn't her fault, she knows that she will always bear that responsibility in her heart. And why not? Why shouldn't she? I don't blame her exactly, don't get me wrong. We haven't always seen eye to eye, but I have a great deal of respect for the woman, both professionally and magically. You'd be a fool not to. It doesn't take a Metamorphmagus to tell that her magical reserves are immense, her control absolute and her knowledge formidable.

It's a pity the same can't be said of her common sense. Which is odd, as I would never have thought her lacking in that area. It has to be said though, for a woman who has spent the better part of forty years teaching a gaggle of adolescents, she really dropped the Quaffle on this one. You'd have thought she'd have seen the signs. You'd have thought she'd have read between the lines. Merlin, I knew the boy was unhappy in the brief moments I met him, and I barely knew the kid. I don't need to say a word though. There is nothing I could possibly say that this woman doesn't already know. There are no accusations that she hasn't already levelled at herself three-fold.

The whoosh of the floo again, and I turn away from my close inspection to see Dumbledore step into the room, closely followed by Severus. It's the first time I've seen Dumbledore since the incident, and even I can't stop my eyes widening in horrified shock. Albus Dumbledore, the leader of all that is great and good, the only man in the world You-Know-Who is afraid of, the man we all rely on, looks like a fragile old man. He sits heavily in one of the chairs nearest the fireplace, and simply rests his head in his hands for a long moment. Nobody moves, even Severus stands silently beside him. Nobody knows what to say. When he looks up, I'm horrified to see the tear marks running in rivets down the old man's face and the haunted look of grief in those glittering blue eyes. It's in that moment that the truth hits me. I mean, it truly hits me.

Albus Dumbledore doesn't know what to do now. After all these years of planning for You-Know-Who's return, all these years grooming the Potter boy to keep on doing the impossible, all these years of being the one with the plan… Albus Dumbledore has no idea what happens next. The thought hits me like a lightning strike. Can it even be possible? Surely I must be mistaken. But the silence stretches on overly long and still Dumbledore says nothing. He just sits there, worn and slumped in the chair, looking at us with what I can only describe as defeat in his eyes.

"So, what's the plan, Albus?" Moody breaks the silence gruffly, his voice seeming obnoxiously loud in this circle of quietly grieving people. "What comes next?"

Still Albus looks at us. The silence stretches further than I would have thought possible, and yet still it stretches. Nobody so much as shuffles or clears their throat. You could hear a pin drop if only I had one on hand.

"The boy's funeral is tomorrow." When that dreadful silence is finally broken though, it isn't Dumbledore's gentle and calming voice we hear. No. It is Severus who speaks, his low drawl sounding almost mocking under the circumstances. Minerva's head shoots up, but whatever she finds in her colleagues gaze is enough for her, and she doesn't interrupt. "The muggle family have been invited. I don't imagine they will attend however. But for the rest of us, that is the plan. Such as it is, at any rate. Get through the funeral. Deal with the public and the student. Face another day."

"And after that, Severus?" Mad-Eye growls, his eye spinning furiously. "What happens now, Albus?"

"Do we have to talk about this now, Moody?" Minerva asks brokenly, her voice cracking harshly on the words. "For Merlin's sake, we still need to bury the boy…"

"When else are we going to talk about it?" Moody snaps harshly, but his tone doesn't fool me for a second. "The last I heard from Albus at least, the Potter boy was our main chance against the Dark Lord, the poor sod. No wonder he decided to top himself."

"That's enough, Alastor," Dumbledore's voice, the voice of my childhood, sounds unbelievably weary and… old. For the first time in the many years I have heard him, Dumbledore sounds every year of his age. The power and the intensity that I have come to expect have slipped away, to be replaced by wavering, trembling syllables of an old man. Even as I watch, I expect him to stand, to take charge, to be… Dumbledore. But he doesn't even look up as he speaks. "You are right, but now is not the time."

"Then when will be?" Moody's voice rises in intensity, even as Dumbledore's declines. "Are we to hold a meeting once the last clay has settled? Is that the right time? A week after the burial, Albus? Will that be the right time? A month? How many more will be dead at the Dark Lord's hands? Are we to wait until it is one of us that is being manhandled into the earth, good only as food for the worms and the beetles? Does it have to be one of our own? Or will it then be too late? When is a 'good time', Albus. Answer me that."

"Harry was one of us," Arthur says quietly but firmly, his hands laid flat and steady on the table as he gazes unblinkingly at Moody. Strangely, it is the old Auror who looks away first, and Arthur's blue eyes move across the room, catching each of our gazes in turn. "He was certainly one of mine. He was more than a pawn or a prophet or a weapon. He was a boy. And we broke him. Every single one of us. So do you know what I am going to do?"

Once more, that gaze catches each of us in turn and I am taken aback by the potent aura of authority that I see there. Of all of us present, Arthur is the timid one, the gentle one. By no means would I call him spineless; you have to have a level of courage that most don't possess just to be in this little group of vigilante warriors, and Arthur has been in it from the very beginning. It's just… I've seen him over the years. School functions and the like and then at these very meetings, and nothing about him stood out to me as leadership material. And remember, I am very, very good at reading people. It's part of my stock in trade.

Arthur is a man who looks down and follows. It's what makes him such a good match with Molly. He's happy to take the back seat and let someone else drive. But now, something has changed. He doesn't look away, doesn't baulk from this confrontation, is not standing down but is instead holding his head and demanding our attention. If I had ever imagined anyone other than Dumbledore taking charge of this little meeting, it might have been Moody or even Minerva… but never Arthur. Yet, here he stands when Albus will not even rise from his chair. When nobody responds to his question, the red haired man stands and walks toward the floo, but before he reaches it he stops, turns and waits.

"I am going to go home to my family, to the children who need me and my wife. We will prepare for Harry's funeral together. I will not let either Ginny or Ron face this alone. I never should have let them." His gaze once more rakes across us. "And when my boy is buried and cold earth settled around him as an eternal blanket, I will stand strong. I will teach my children, every one of them, regardless of their age or inexperience. I will teach them all the tricks I know that might just help them survive this war. I will teach their friends and their acquaintances. It is long past time we stopped waiting for someone to fix this mess for us."

The floo powder sparkles in the fireplace and he steps forward, so he is standing less than a hairs breadth from the grate.

"It is long past time we stopped relying on a single boy, a child, to be our hero and vanquish the demons we ourselves helped to raise. It is time we fought. It is time we won."

With that, he is gone in a shower of sparks and flash of flame.

"The man has got a point," Moody growls, stomping off toward the front door with a snarled curse at Walburga Black's portrait. Nobody moves to stop him. I doubt anyone but Albus would dare. I hear the crack as he apparates away from the steps.

And then there were five.

And in that silence, Albus finally raises his head and I catch a glimpse at his eyes. What I see there causes me to flinch back, for in that moment, all of his walls drop and I see his grief, his anguish, his pain and his guilt.

In that second, overcome by sorrow and anger and bone-aching weariness, I see the true face of Albus Dumbledore, as all of the veils drop at once, all of the masks slip at the same time and all of the facades crumble.

In that moment I see his fear and that chills me to my very bones.


	6. A Life In A Chest

_This is undoubtedly the longest of these chapters and by quite a way, but I suppose it makes sense. The previous chapters have touched on important characters but have all been from the perspective of bit-players in the original universe. This takes a relatively central character and whilst the brokenness is no more real here than with any of the others, it is perhaps that little bit more raw, a little more personal._

 _It goes without saying that this is dark and potentially triggering. This is a fic examining the shifting shards that are left behind after a suicide. The betrayal, the anger, the fear and the loss._ _The cries unheard and the tears shed alone._

 _Try not to cut yourself._

* * *

 **Chapter 6; A Life In A Chest**

Life never ceases to amaze me. I have lost count of the number of times over the years that I have truly believed things couldn't possibly get any worse. Life delights in proving me wrong, time and time and time again. At five years old, sat in St. Mungo's crying helplessly because the pain was unbearable and yet the adults stood around with grim faces, talking quietly and seriously around me. The look on my father's face as he told me that I had become a monster, the very thing he had declaimed to the Ministry. The fear on my mother's face each turning of the moon. And yet, the world was still not done with me. Despite all these years of being prodded and poked by experts and healers, there is still no cure for lycanthropy. There never will be, at least not in my lifetime.

Or that terrible Halloween night, the night I lost all of my closest friends in one foul swoop, or so I thought at the time. Lily and James betrayed to the death, brutally murdered in front of their baby son, only a year old. Sirius the betrayer, the traitor; sentenced to life in Azkaban for his heinous crimes against the Potters in the name of the Dark Lord. And Pettigrew, the rat, blown to smithereens at the end of his best friends wand as he tackled him in grief fuelled fury. But even that wasn't enough. Even having my entire life torn apart, my only friends – the only people who truly knew me and loved me for what and who I am – ripped from me in the blink of an eye, that was not punishment enough.

By my distrust and my inaction, my only remaining true friend lay rotting miserably surrounded by soul sucking demons for over a decade. If I had stopped and used the brain I had been blessed with, I could have reasoned that Sirius had to be innocent of the betrayal at least. In honesty, I wouldn't have put it past Sirius to blow Pettigrew off the face of the earth in his fury; in fact, he nearly did exactly that not all too many years ago. But I allowed myself to be blinded by my grief and my anger and so I railed at the world for its unfairness as I slunk away to hide forgotten whilst an innocent man lay in Azkaban. Twelve years we lost. And two years was all I was granted with him. It could have been different. It should have been so very different.

Now? Now, less than a year after the death of my best friend… less than a year after I watched the last of the true Marauders fall through a veil of death… less than a year after I held his struggling godson in my arms, fighting the boy to stop him leaping straight into the veil too… It's been less than a year. There should be some kind of rule, some kind of basic decency in the world that means the foundations of your world shouldn't be torn apart more than once. When tragedy strikes, you should have a chance to find your feet in the newly shifting landscape before the next quake strikes you down. Less than a year and yet tomorrow, less than twenty four hours away from now, I have to watch the only son of my closest friends be lowered into the ground in a wooden box.

Minerva dropped the boy's chest off this morning before heading off to some meeting of the Order or another, whatever they have left to say. Since then, I've just been sat here, sat with a bottle of mead, willing myself to open the thrice damned chest and get this over with. Somehow, the act of opening that chest and looking through Harry's belongings will make this feel real and it simply cannot be real. Lily and James son cannot be dead. The Harry I taught to create a fully corporeal patronus before the end of his third year cannot be dead. It simply cannot be true that I will never see that magnificent stag soar through the air again, that I will never watch Lily's bright eyes light up in excitement, enthusiasm, pride or just sheer joy again. If I refuse to accept it, then it cannot be, it will not be true.

If I close my eyes and will hard enough then this entire nightmare will be turned back and it won't be real. Except when I open my eyes again, I'm still sitting here. The chest is still here and the remorseless ache in my chest that hasn't left me since I heard the news, that is still here too. I am here and Harry, that precious, selfless, bloody idiotic boy, my Harry, my cub, is lying still and cold in a box. This isn't going to go away. Harry isn't going to come back. I am now the last Marauder. But am I a true Marauders at all? Some days the answer seems clearer than others. Some days I know I am not worthy to wear this mantle.

I thought it was difficult to accept Sirius' death. There was no body, nothing to bury, nothing to weep over and all the time I kept expecting him to saunter back into the room. His hair would be all over the place and that half-cocked grin would be on his face as he yelled, "GOT YA GOOD THIS TIME, REMUS MY MAN!" And of course I'd engulf him in my arms just before I hit him and hexed him sideways for putting us all through this hell, only to hug his again. And then I'd drag him to Hogwarts by the ear, berating him the entire way, and pull Harry out of class and watch those emerald eyes light up and… Harry. There's that stab of pain through my chest again, that tight band of constriction that makes it difficult to breathe, the sideways flip of my stomach and the wave of nausea that would send me running to the bathroom if only I could trust my legs. Harry. Harry James Potter.

With that thought, I almost force the lid of the chest open, propelled by grief and anguish and waves of guilt that don't quite make it into anger. The catch comes off effortlessly, well looked after over the years and the first thing I see makes my heart catch in my chest. I can't stop the tears that fill my eyes and drip uninterrupted down my face at the sight of that shimmering, silver material nestled so carefully at the top. I don't need to pull it out to know what it is. James' Cloak of Invisibility. It doesn't look a day older than when I last saw James himself wear it; no frayed edges or tattered corners. The tears continue to fall as I reach into the chest to lightly touch the silky smooth material, before running it through my fingers, watching as it slide across my hand, sections of skin turning invisible beneath it.

I can't hold back the desperate sob that escapes from my chest and I find myself clutching at the cloak as though it could bring my cub back to life somehow. If I'd have been told some twenty odd years ago that one day, I would be in possession of James' Invisibility Cloak, I would have laughed aloud in sheer delight. I would never in a million years have imagined the cost incurred in gaining such a frivolous childhood dream. I could never have envisaged the rawness of the anguish or the unbelievable depths of loss and despair I would feel in my ownership. Such things simply cannot be imagined until you experience them, and that is not a horror I could wish on anyone, much less one in the first blooms of youth.

"Are you all right, Remus?"

It's a mark of my abject distraction that I hadn't sensed Tonks at all until she spoke. Under any other circumstances, my senses would have caught her long before she even entered the room. I should have heard the light tread of her footsteps on the wooden panelling or smelled the slight florally sweet fragrance of the conditioner she has used. There are very few benefits to lycanthropy, but at the very least nobody has been able to sneak up on me since my childhood. Even when everything is silent and you think you are moving like a ghost, I can hear the slightest of inhales and exhalations. I can sense the thrumming of your heartbeat and smell the slightly tangy sense of your tension. It has been a long time indeed since anyone managed to make me jump, but Nymphadora manages it.

"Sorry, stupid question," she says wearily, sitting down beside me in the kitchen of this old house full of memories and negativity. Yet it is genuine concern that I can see in her eyes as she looks up at me. "Minerva mentioned that she had dropped Harry's chest off with you. I thought… I thought I'd check in on you. See if I could do anything."

"Can you bring him back?" I almost don't recognise the voice that finally emerges from my throat in a dry rasp originating somewhere from the very pit of my chest. It's an unfamiliar growl and Nymphadora staggers back from the force of it. There is no hiding behind the gentle courtesies, the full force of my helpless grief underlies my tone. "Can you manage that? Can you do that?"

"I'm sorry, Remus," she says quietly. "I really am sorry."

"I thought not." I laugh bitterly, a laugh that is more of a sob than anything else. Like my voice it is rough and hoarse and I can hear the wolf in it; the lone wolf baying at the moon. "So why ask?"

I regret the words almost before they leave my mouth, certainly before I see the shadow of hurt cross her face. It's that hurt that reminds me. She isn't Nymphadora; a tool of the Order. She is Tonks, and she came here of her own free will. Her hair flushes as red as her face as she stands to leave.

"No. I'm sorry." I admit wearily, still gazing at the silky smooth material between my fingers. "I shouldn't have said that. You didn't deserve that. I don't know what came over me…"

"It's all right, Remus," Tonks replies with a wan smile, her hair lightening to a gentle auburn as she speaks. "Nobody can blame you. We all say thinks we don't mean when…"

"That doesn't excuse me," I interrupt wearily, passing the bottle across the table to her. I wave at the chest in front of me; that three foot box. "A whole life. The life of a wonderful, vibrant, strong and caring boy. A box. That box holds all that remains of my cub. James and Lily's son, Sirius's reason for living. James, Lily, Sirius and now Harry… all gone."

"I don't know what to say Remus," Tonks admits, pouring herself a glass of mead. I don't have the energy to wonder where she found the glass. "I don't even know if there is anything I can say. I know how much you cared for Harry. How much you cared for both of them. I can't imagine…"

"An Invisibility Cloak passed down through four generations of Potters," I interrupt her wittering grimly. "Four generations, only to end up in the hands of a mutt of a werewolf…"

"You're no mutt." It is Tonks' turn to interrupt me as I place the cloak gently onto the table and reach down into the chest once more. "James never thought of you so. Neither did Lily or Sirius. Certainly Harry didn't. They loved you, each and every one of them…"

There's a deep indrawn breath as though she were to continue, but instead she closes her mouth sharply at the sound of my bitter snort. Running my hand lovingly across the cloak once more, I reach down into the chest again and this time my hand closes on a folded piece of parchment that I more than recognise. The snort turns into a pained gasp. I don't just recognise this scrap of parchment, I spent many hours creating it. More than anybody else left alive, I know how it works. I remember the research that went into making it work, the long hours of forcing Sirius to make good use of his excellent cartography skills despite his lamentable attention span. James' Homonculous Charm and my very own Tabula Charm, a piece of magic I had pieced together from numerous historical texts and had not the courage to admit to my fellows how astonished I was when it worked.

The Marauders Map, a piece of stunning magical craftsmanship if I do say so myself… and I do. The same Marauders Map that I confiscated from Harry less than three years ago. The same Marauders Map that Sirius, in his typically ill-considered and juvenile fashion, somehow jinxed to repel Severus Snape. I never did figure out how he managed that. Despite my best efforts at control, my tears once more spill over and I let out a sound that is somewhere between a sob and a howl. It's a noise torn from the very centre of my soul and it releases something within me, a barrier I have worked so very hard to keep standing. The Marauders Map, the final link between Harry and James, between father and son, much like the Invisibility Cloak, somehow left in my frail and trembling hands.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," I choke out, my tears falling like drops of rain onto the parchment.

"What…?" Tonks begins, only to gasp aloud as the map comes to life before us, the spidery lines tracking out in Sirius's distinctive hand. "Merlin's balls! That's amazing!"

Before I know what is happening, the now orange haired and highly excitable Auror has reached her hand out and snatched the map from my grip. I bite down on the growl that bubbles up in my throat, although my lip twists slightly regardless. My property. Mine. I fight down the irrational rage that threatens to overtake me. Thankfully, Tonks is far too fixated on the wonders of the map to notice my momentary lapse of stiffly held control. Her eyes scan over the moving dots hungrily, soaking in as much as her mind can hold.

"Minerva… Flitwick… Snape…" she murmurs to herself, her hair almost flashing in its luminescence. How that girl passed her stealth exams I will never know. She doesn't just wear her heart on her sleeve, she quite literally advertises it in every fibre of her being. "Even Albus himself! Everyone is here! Where in Merlin's name did you get this from?" Her last question is clearly aimed at me, even though her eyes never leave the parchment in front of her. "What I'd have given for this when I was a wee squirt!"

"We made it," I respond, a strange rasp in my throat as memories flood back of the long weeks and months spent poring over this document. I can't help a small sincere smile at the sheer disbelief and awe in her face. "James, myself, Sirius… and I suppose the rat helped slightly. He always did have a knack for ferreting out the hidden corners and hidey-holes. Peeves helped us too actually, believe it or not."

"No wonder you lot are the stuff of school legend!" Tonks almost gushes with undisguised excitement. "I can't imagine the amount of chaos I could have caused if I'd have had this in my youthful arsenal!"

"I'm rather tempted to gift it to Filius, actually," I remark dully, not taking anywhere near as much joy as I might once have at the look of horrified astonishment that suffuses Tonks's face. Without thinking I pull Harry's Firebolt from the chest and run my hands down its smooth length, feeling yet another stab of pain as images of Harry flash through my mind. The way he's soar through the air with such joyous abandon, his hair flipping across his face; how similar he looked to James, in fact up in the air you wouldn't have been able to tell the two apart. "It would likely make the man's century…"

"But you can't…" Tonks begins, but abruptly closes her mouth with an almost audible snap. Strange how grief puts a barrier around you. Only last month she would have had no hesitation at all about tearing my hide into tiny little strips for such a goodie-goodie-two-shoes suggestion. Now, she is silent, fearful of upsetting me any further. As though anything could possibly cause as much hurt as Harry's death has already caused.

"Sirius bought him this, you know," I muse thoughtfully, placing a jar of Fleetwoods High Finish Handle Police, a pair of silver Tail-Twig Clippers and a small brass broom compass down on the table. "He told me all about it that last dreadful year in this damned house. He was so pleased with himself, like a child who has been left unaccompanied in Zonko's. He used to love watching Harry fly… even then, despite the dangers, he'd sneak into Hogwarts as Padfoot every opportunity he could." I clear my throat brusquely, trying to shift the blockage that seems to have become lodged there. "You'd have thought Albus would have fixed that minor snag in school security, but then again, I had always assumed that Hogwarts would have an alarm of some sort to alert staff to a student in mortal danger." That bitter laugh forces its way out of my throat once more. "Wrong on both counts. Wrong again."

"Remus, you know…" Tonks hesitates before continuing in a rush. "You know this isn't your fault? You didn't cause Harry to…"

"Isn't it?" My voice is harsh and guttural as I pull another sheet of parchment out of the chest. I look at it in confusion. It could easily be a toddler's artistic representation of the Boy-Who-Lived, at least I assume that it is meant to represent Harry from the lurid scar and what I looks like a Weasley sweater with a shaky 'H' on it. "It isn't my fault? Is that what you're trying to say?"

"You can't…" Tonks begins again, but this time I wave a hand at her sharply. Despite the rudeness of my gesture, or perhaps because of it, she tails off into silence.

"I blamed Harry," I try to hide the break in my voice, but the pity in Tonks's eyes tells me that I don't succeed. Blinking rapidly to try to conceal the shameful tears in my eyes, I continue, looking down at that awful painting as I speak. "If Harry hadn't been so foolhardy, so reckless, so damned self-sacrificing and impulsive, if he hadn't gone to the Ministry of Magic that day… Sirius, the one true friend left to me, would have been alive. I blamed Harry. I tried not to let him see it, but… he knew. How could he not know?"

My voice trembles, cracks, shatters and I find myself holding my head in my hands, desperately trying to control the wrenching sobs that threaten to overtake me. When the child I had sworn to protect with my life needed me the most, I was not there for him. When James and Lily's son needed the closest thing he had left to a father figure, there was no one to stand by his side. I blamed the boy for my best friend's death and he knew it, even if I never said the words out loud. If he'd just learned Occlumency like he was damn well supposed to, if he'd only given Severus a chance to act on his words, if he had trusted in Sirius… if, if, if…"

None of the ifs or buts or maybes will bring Sirius back. They never would. None of them will bring Harry back.

My hands rummage in the chest again, if only as a way to avoid seeing the pity and the disgust that must be stamped across Tonk's face. My fingers close tightly first around a small metal badge, and I squeeze it tightly in my palm, allowing the sharp pain to distract me from the roaring agony rising in my chest. And as I relax my fist, my fingers brush against another cold metal surface. The first, a badge worn both by Harry and his father in our day; a badge of pride on the Quidditch fields and beyond, a testimony to their skill, their talent and their effort. The second is unmistakably Miss Granger's work; I can't imagine any other student that age managing to enchant an object so unbelievably well.

"The Protean Charm," I say quietly, turning the coin over in my fingers gently. "A perfect Protean Charm, repeated Merlin knows how many times and perfect each time…"

"What is it?" Tonks asks in obvious bewilderment. "It just looks like a galleon…"

"And therein lies the genius," I say softly, rubbing the coin gently as I speak. "One of Miss Granger's finer moments, I think anybody would have to admit. Although once more an example of a situation that should never have been permitted to escalate that far. I don't know who was worse, Albus Dumbledore for running such unbelievably poor damage limitation or Fudge for being well… the malfunctioning gibbon that he is."

"You can hardly blame Dumbledore for being removed from his own school by that evil toad-faced hag!" Tonks exclaims, her eyes wide, looking for all the world like I had kicked a puppy rather than merely questioned a figurehead. "He couldn't have foreseen what happened…"

"On Merlin's tangled beard…" The words come out as a bellow and Tonks shrinks back at the repressed fury lurking below the surface of my tone; waiting, bubbling, stewing. "Why not!?"

The two metal tokens strike the wall with a distinctly unsatisfactory twang as I stand to turn and pace restlessly across the room, ignoring the look of horror on the young auror's face. I fight the rising tide of almost unbearable rage that surges through me, but I can't hide the snarl in my voice or the hot and violent anger on my face. Tonks just stares at me, the beginnings of fear starting to dawn on her face at whatever she sees in my eyes.

"Why in the name of all that is good and right and proper, why not?" I demand again, gesticulating sharply. "He's Albus Bloody Dumbledore! The Leader of all that is light! Why did he stand by and let Fudge and his band of baboons meddle in Hogwarts? Why didn't he stand firm and fight for what he knew to be right? Why were a group of students, a rag-tag group of children, left to lead a rebellion, forced to band together in secret and learn what should have been taught them as their right in dusty corners and hidden nooks? Why Nymphadora? Why didn't Albus do something when he had the chance? Why did he allow himself to be made powerless? Why did he let them chase him out of his own castle!? Why didn't he see it coming!?"

And in the background of course are all the questions I do not dare to voice, for fear that if I do, I will be unable to stem the flood of emotions that will be awakened. Why didn't Albus or Minerva or somebody, anybody, notice just how badly the boy was struggling? Why was he left alone, with only teenagers around him as support? Why wasn't he offered professional help? How was this allowed to happen? How in Merlin's name could everyone have been so blind?

Of course, I have to include myself in that assessment. But it's far easier to expend my fury on Albus rather than myself. It's not as if I won't spend long hours awake doing exactly that anyway.

"This is Albus we are talking about!" I realise my hands are shaking, and clench them tightly. "How did he miss this!?"

"Because he's not perfect?" Tonks says the words quietly, but somehow the ring in the enclosed space. "Because he is one man and he isn't omnipotent and he can't see everything and he's trying to lead a resistance group in a country wide war? Because sometimes he has no choice but to trust other people to be his eyes and his ears, his hands and his feet? Because we are those people and we failed?"

Like pebbles dropped into a stream, displacing the water just by falling and creating ripples that expand and reverberate, Tonks's words drop into my subconscious. They force me to confront the reality I have been endeavouring to avoid. The reality I have always known but could not bring myself to think, let alone to say out loud. Even if Albus were Merlin himself, he still wouldn't be able to be everywhere, to see everything, to know all that passes for knowledge in those hallowed halls of Hogwarts. Yes, he should have seen. Without a shadow of a doubt, he should have seen how close my precious cub was to shattering and falling to pieces.

He should have seen.

But so should Minerva, so should Severus, so should Filius and Hagrid and Poppy and Horace. So should I. But so engrossed in my own misery and grief was I, that I failed the one person who needed me. The one I should have protected with every fibre of my being. I should have seen, I should have reacted, I should have been there.

"You can't blame Dumbledore, Remus," Tonks continues softly, pity and concern warring in her expression as she looks at me. "He's devastated. McGonagall, Arthur Weasley, even Snape. They are all devastated. But perhaps Dumbledore most of all. But he's a wizard, Remus, not a god. He can't be everywhere, know everything, see everyone. He just can't. And the loss of Harry… I saw him today, Remus. It's eating him alive. It's killing him.

I don't react to her dramatic turns of phrase, instead continuing to look bleakly into the chest that holds all that remains of my cub. Books, in various states of disarray; some clearly well-loved and falling apart at the binding, others virtually untouched and pristine. Clothing, neatly folded in a way that almost hides the careless creases left by the day to day abuse of a teenage boy; Minerva's work, if I don't miss my guess. His wand. I reach into the chest and pick it out of the folds of clothing it has been nestled in. Eleven inches, holly, phoenix feather. It reverberates in my hands as though ringing an echo of my own loss, my own grief.

Can wands mourn? The deep sense of loss that I am getting from this stick of wood, thin and supple, disquiets me more than I can say. It all but trembles in my hands with it and I cannot think of another word to describe the sensation but grieving. It reaches, searches… pines. For Harry. For my cub. I can almost feel it searching me, delving into my magical core and finding me wanting. I am not Harry. I am not its wizard. The wand chooses the wizard, Ollivander always says. And it doesn't understand why the very heart of it has gone away. It doesn't understand why I am not Harry. Because Harry, the wizard with whom it shares its very lifeblood is gone.

Never have I felt such a connection with a wand that is not my own. I feel it as it trembles in my shaking hands. Still searching, still desperately reaching. Until it goes dead between my fingers. The sudden absence of sensation is shocking and I gasp. I look down at it blankly, not comprehending what has happened. Waving it sharply, I mutter an incantation, ignoring Tonks's shocked protest, but there is nothing. No spark, no light, no energy. I suddenly realise what I knew instinctively; the wand is dead. It is merely an inert stick of wood. There may as well be no magical core hidden within it. Because I am not Harry. Because Harry is gone. I didn't know wands could do that.

"Remus, whst!?" Tonks gasps as I slam the wand against my knee, winces at the unmistakable sound of a wand snapping. "No!"

"It's gone," I say hollowly, looking at the tufts of ref feather I can see poking from the broken ends of the wood, such thin and brittle wood. A wizard's lifeblood. "He's gone."

Finally, the tears break uncontrollably and I sob as though I were a cub once more. Utterly unrestrained, the tears match my heartfelt anguish. My chest heaves, my shoulders shake. I cry unashamedly, almost forgetting my company as I pound the table in unimaginable rage, lift my head to the sky and howl, a mournful, empty sound of desolation.

It is the scent of flowers that enfolds me. Rose petals, ylang ylang, petunia and… and lily. Lily. I feel arms enfolding me, so gentle, so breakable. I feel the soft brush of breath of breath at my ear and the silky sweep of hair on my cheek. I feel the reverberations in the air even as I hear Tonks's gentle words.

"You are not alone, Remus."


	7. Unfinished Business

_Another strangely long chapter, which even I didn't expect. This is a different viewpoint and a different set of emotions I suspect. In response to some of the comments; I'm not saying that any of the previous chapters depict desirable grieving behaviours of emotions, but that they do represent the real pain, grief, loss and guilt that lies behind the surviving friends and families eyes. It's a topic not often covered in depth, possibly because many do not understand, others are afraid and many more don't know how to put their agony into recognisable words._

 _It goes without saying that this is a dark fic. It's unsettling, it's frightening perhaps. It is unnerving to sift through the shards and the broken edges that are left behind after a suicide of someone close. There's no gentleness about the emotions and no pretty way to cover up the howls and cries of guilt and anguish._

 _Whatever your thinking on the matter though, welcome to another chapter. Try not to cut yourself._

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Unfinished Business**

Draco paces. I watch. This I know is the beginning of a pattern. Draco paces and I watch. This cycle repeats itself day after day, almost without fail. Draco pacing. Me watching. Vincent staring sulkily away into the distance, watching something only he can see. Pansy plaiting her hair and fretting. All the while Draco paces and I watch.

I know I should say something. Something useful, something helpful. But I don't know what to say. I never know what to say. It isn't just me. Vincent is just as lost and even Pansy, who usually has words for everything, has no more words than the rest of us. But my role is to serve. I should know what to say. I should be able to help. I don't. So I watch Draco pace, my eyes following him across the room. I want to say something that will make it all ok again, that will bring everything back to normal. But I don't have the words and so I watch.

Everyone thinks me and Vincent are just stupid, that we are lumps of useless flesh with no brain or thoughts of our own. Everyone. The Professors, even Professor Snape does even if he would never say it. The Snakes stick up for their own. We're muscle, not brain. Everyone knows that. Everyone except Draco and Pansy and Blaise. I can't blame them. Words just don't come easily to me. It's even worse when they are written down.

When the words are written down they squiggle all over the pages and it takes all my concentration just to make them sit still. But if I'm making the words behave then I can't listen. And the words won't behave if I stop trying so hard. So everyone will have finished the chapter and I'm still fighting them. Maybe Draco could pretend that he understands, but I can't. So McGonagall or Sinistra or even Professor Snape will ask a question, but I'm still making the words sit still and I don't hear. So I get it wrong. Or even worse, I don't answer at all.

I'm not stupid. I don't think Vincent is either. It's just some things look different and I don't see things as clearly as other people do. Pansy and Draco and even the Granger mudblood, the words just flow into them. They breathe and they have understanding, knowledge… power. I have muscles. I could beat any one of them into a bulk. I can hit a bludger across the field. But that's not being a wizard.

A wizard doesn't rely on fists, Dad says and Dad is always right. He's far better than me in all the ways that matter. Not just the book smarts but the proper smarts. The kind of smarts that a mudblood will never understand. Real strength. A wizard uses his wand, Dad says. But using a wand means making the words stop moving and sometimes I think it was simpler before I had a wand.

I think Professor Flitwick gets it. He puts the squiggly words into sentences when no one else is looking. But he's the only one really. Sometimes it even makes me almost wish that Flitwick was my Head of House. Almost. He makes the moving words seem more clear. But I'd never be clever enough for Ravenclaw, even if I could make the words seem right. Everyone knows that. Especially me. Professor Snape does all right by us snakes anyway. Mostly anyway. I wish he was here now. He'd know exactly what to say. He'd know what Draco needs in a way I can't even imagine. He'd know and he'd make it right. He'd fix it.

I don't know how to fix it though. Instead all I can do is watch as Draco paces stiffly, his hands clutched tightly at his sides and lips so thinly pressed together that they are almost invisible in that pale, aristocratic face. Conflicting emotions clearly war on his sculptured features, but it is a sheer rage that I can see simmering fiercely just beneath the surface of those cool, grey eyes. It's a rage unlike any I have ever seen, coiled tightly like a serpent within him, just waiting for the moment it lashes out.

"Find someone else to stare at!" Draco snaps the words at me harshly, his eyes lit with an uncanny light. It worries me in a way that I cannot explain, not even to myself. "You look even more dense than you usually do, Goyle, and that's saying something! I wouldn't have thought that possible!"

"Sorry, Draco," I say softly, lowering my gaze obediently to the floor without thinking. Some lessons are learned early, almost from the cradle in fact.

Such subservience might seem strange to muggles and blood-traitors and half-bloods, all of those with the watering down of the old traditions. But us pure-bloods still hold by them and they are what make us strong. To me and Vince, this is our entire purpose and it is no small purpose. The safety of the only Malfoy heir is resting in our clumsy hands; his health, his honour and his pride. Mr Malfoy has entrusted us with the most precious thing in the world to him; he has entrusted us with his son.

But Draco doesn't just accept the apology as I would have expected though. Instead, he whirls back around, that barely constrained rage sparking like fire in his grey eyes, a rage now aimed squarely at me. I flinch back, rocked by the force of it in a way that no physical attack could ever make me do.

"Yes, sir. No, sir. Three nifflers on the roof, sir!" He spits the words with a venom I usually hear reserved for mudbloods and traitors to our kind. The Weasley's and the half-bloods. I stare at him blindly, bewildered and hurt in equal measure. "In the name of Merlin, grow some damn balls, Goyle!"

"That's enough, Draco," Pansy remarks in a far sharper tone that she usually uses on Draco. Shock briefly covers his face, only to be quickly surpassed and replaced by his characteristic sneer. "Taking your issues out on Gregory isn't fair and you know it. If you want a fair target, then shoot at me. Or is that not allowed because I'm a girl?" She sneers the last word as an insult, holding Draco's gaze challengingly, her eyes bright with a strange malice. She speaks again into the growing silence. "Well!?"

Draco shoots a vicious glare across the common room and the small gaggle of first years who had been lurking unobtrusively next to the fire scuttle from the room as though set alight. I can't blame them. I would too if I had any choice in the matter. Seeing the look on Draco's face, I am tempted regardless of duty and purpose.

Dad always says that there's a look that some wizards get, a look that says someone is going to die. He says Mr Malfoy has that look and I believe him. Dad also says that if I ever see that look on Draco's face, I need to get out. Leave the room by the swiftest and most direct route possible, as quietly as possible and fetch someone. Then he muttered something about Merlin helping those who help themselves and cleaning blood stains off fine Persian rugs. I know the look Dad was describing. Draco is wearing it now.

Yet Pansy seems utterly unfazed as she stares down Draco, even as Vince and I exchange equally worried scowls. Mr Crabbe Senior must have given Vince a very similar talk and the other boy is edging backwards towards the door. I have my wand in my hand, but I don't know what I'm meant to do with it. I am to protect and serve Draco, but I'm not sure that really extends to hexing an unarmed girl sideways. Even if that girl is Pansy Parkinson, and Pansy could never be classed as unarmed even stranding naked in a field somewhere. She has a knowledge of offensive magic that rivals even Draco's. Some things are taught young. Almost from the cradle, in fact.

"So you've got nothing?" This slip of a girl taunts the heir of Malfoy house blithely, stepping forwards almost provocatively, a distinct sway to her hips. "Don't you need to prove your manhood? Hit me. Hex me. Do something spectacularly stupid that will ensure Professor Snape murders you quietly in your sleep in such a way even your daddy couldn't suspect him of? Or is daddy's little princess scared?"

Draco lets out an unarticulated growl from the back of his throat, a growl most unbecoming of the scion of the Malfoy house. It's in that loss of control that I finally understand just what Pansy is playing out; what she's doing. She's baiting him. Deliberately taunting him. Forcing him into a flashy confrontation well away from prying eyes and gleeful whispers spread in the corridors. She is approaching the nest of the dragon and sticking her head straight into the fire. Someone is going to get burned. I just wish I was more certain that it isn't going to be me. I'm better with numbers than with words and I still think my chances of escaping unscathed are slim. Like unbelievably slim.

"What is your problem, Pansy?" Draco snarls, his hand in one hand and that look of murder on his face. He takes another two steps forward, until he is looming over the smaller girl. I glance at the door in consternation. I want to get out. I want to get Professor Snape. He'd be able to calm this down. He'd know what to say to make this go away. But I can't because I can't leave Draco. I cannot, I will not, leave Draco. And so I stand and watch. Silently. Helplessly.

When the first curse flies, it is with such sudden force that I can't tell who cast it and within a fraction of a second the room is filled with flashes of light from all directions. Red light as vivid as blood, yellow light filled with sizzling intensity, dark blurs of colour hinting at a need to wound, to hurt, to injure. I react instinctively. There's no need for further thought as I watch a sofa explodes with fabric and inner stuffing covering the surrounding area. The fabric is still hissing slightly as it falls.

I react instinctively. I do my job; what I've been trained from my first breath to do. I raise a shield around Draco, the strongest magic I can force into it. The shimmering aura around Pansy suggests that Vince has thought one step further than me. He's right, Professor Snape would have our hides for potions ingredients if either of these two does any real harm to the other. But the very core of my being ensures that I protect Draco first and foremost. Above all.

Holding the shield takes nearly all of my focus and so I can do nothing else but watch the beautiful but viciously violent dance that Pansy and Draco are in the throes of. The two of them sidestep around the room, twisting and dodging, all the time hurling curses with an intensity that frightens me, curses that are moving so quickly that I cannot keep track. This is no practice duel. Both of them are out for blood. And neither of them is in the least bit concerned with the defensive magic; Draco because he has us for that reason and Pansy because she doesn't seem to need it. Vince's shield is almost unnecessary as she ducks and dive, rolls and darts away with an unnerving nimbleness. In that moment she almost doesn't seem human.

Draco however isn't dodging and my shield is taking a tremendous pounding from the constant blows that strike against it. I can feel the sweat building up on my forehead and starting to run in rivets down my back as I funnel every last inch of my magical reserves into holding that wall of shimmering light around him. Pansy throws curse after curse, all of them ridiculously overpowered, many twisting in such a way that I have to keep a full circular shield up at all times. And Draco doesn't dodge. He makes no effort at all to avoid her spells, absolutely secure in the knowledge that we won't let any harm come to him. We cannot let any harm come to him. If it comes down to it, Vince will drop his shield around Pansy to bolster my efforts, but both of us know that has to be the final option, the absolute final option.

Draco stalks his slender opponent, his expression feral in its intensity, a grin with no humour at all marked into his face. My entire world reduces to my ability to keep that shield in front of Draco, an unwavering shimmering wall of protection. I don't notice that my teeth are grinding together painfully. I don't pay any attention to the tightness of my back or how my shirt has become soaked through. I can't. I flick the sweat away from my eyes with a quick toss of my head, knowing the moment I take heed of my own discomfort is the moment I will fail in my duty.

So utterly focussed am I that it comes as a complete shock when the two combatants are thrown forcibly backwards, bodies hitting the floor with unmuffled thuds. The curse that Draco tries to hurl is bounced back at him, striking straight through my shield as though it were non-existent, to be met with an undisguised yelp and the crack of a bone breaking. I only realise that I have sunk to my knees as the sallow face of my Head of House looms over me. My entire body is trembling with a fatigue that seems to reach right into my bones. He eyes me critically and I nearly fall to my hands when a pale, slim hand reaches down to me. I look up at the foreboding figure in disbelief, but the hand is not retracted and after a shocked moment, I reach out and grab hold of it with my own meaty slab.

There's a surprising amount of strength in that cool grip, despite the fact that I can feel all of the bones in his hand. His grip is reassuring, a cold and dry strength to counteract the sweat slicked hand I offer him. He draws me carefully to my feet, supporting me with his other hand when I stagger and guiding me into the chair he has summoned behind me. It's a struggle to keep my eyes open as I sink into the soft fabric and watch that tall, menacing figure stalking towards Draco.

It's only then that something important occurs to me, something unbelievable in fact. If I wasn't too drained to focus on it, I would sit in wonder. It will come back to me for many nights to come. Professor Snape put me first. Before even Draco, his own godson. He came to me and he prioritised me. Both Draco and Pansy are lying sprawled on the floor, Draco's pale face set in a grimace of pain and still my Head of House came to me first. He looked after me. He put my wellbeing above that of the Malfoy heir. This astonishes me beyond measure.

"Was it your intention, Mr Malfoy, to reduce your vassal – in name and in law as Lord – to a dangerous level of magical exhaustion?"

The professor's voice is silky smooth, but my dad's voice reminds me once again that I am to beware of the snake with the silver tongue. I know with every fibre of my being that Professor Snape is dangerous; how else could he hope to fool Dumbledore? He is powerfully dangerous and he is quietly lethal and right now he is coldly furious. I just don't understand why. After all, I was only doing my job.

"Was this carelessness or was it criminal negligence, Mr Malfoy? Pray do enlighten me. I will be fascinated to hear your answer."

A potion appears in those pale, slender fingers and he floats it across to me silently, never taking that furious gaze off Draco. I gulp it without thought, my trust in my Heads of House absolute. Within moments, a flood of energy flows through me, rekindling my dwindling strength just as a wave of calm and peace sweeps in. I stare at the vial in some incredulity. That shouldn't be possible. One potion shouldn't be able to do all that. I feel restored, full, replete. I feel warm and safe, as though nothing in the world could possibly go wrong. Despite everything that just happened, I feel utterly content.

"That potion is one of my own device and creation Mr Goyle, and is not yet on the market. The calming effects are only temporary; however, it will continue to restore your magical reserves over the next twenty-four hours. If you do have any unforeseen or uncomfortable side effects of any kind, then I will expect to be informed immediately." Professor Snape turns that dark, harrowing gaze back to the prone form of Draco, his face as hard as stone as another wave of astonished gratitude sweeps through me. He noticed me. Not as a lumbering shadow to Draco, but as me. He saw me, Gregory Goyle. "Well, Mr Malfoy," he drawls softly, unblinking. "I am waiting. Absolute incompetence or criminal negligence? Which one is it to be?"

Draco just gapes up at the stern, darkly cloaked figure that is glaring down at him. Another realisation strikes me. Professor Snape used the legally binding words. The old words. The words I didn't think anyone still remembered except those of us who are defined by them. Vassal and Lord. Lord and vassal. But he spoke them as though Draco was constrained by an obligation to me. As though I were important.

"I am still waiting." Every word is measured and precise, a deadly calm running through them. I watch as Draco struggles to a sitting position, clutching his arm to his chest gingerly. "Do not presume to test my patience further, boy."

That last word is spat out with venom and I see Draco flinch back from it, his face losing whatever colour it still had.

"I didn't… I can't…" For the first time in many years, I watch as the careful Malfoy poise crumbles and disintegrates in front of my eyes. Suddenly, he is a boy again, a boy being skinned alive by a man he respects and admires above all but his own father. "I lost my… I'm sorry." He finally settles on. "I didn't mean to."

"That is what a four year old might say when they are caught stealing cookies in the dead of the night," Professor Snape drawls, his voice almost a hiss with venom dripping from every syllable. "That is why children are not entrusted with the bond you bear. How old are you, Malfoy?"

"Sixteen, sir," Draco has no choice but to respond as the silence stretches and the look in those dark eyes becomes even darker. The words come through gritted teeth though, humiliation clear in his tone.

"Act it, Mr Malfoy." The Professor snaps the words, and I can see them strike the pale boy like a whip. "To expect and to allow another to step in and do your duty is the act of a child. You do not have the luxury of being a child. And if I ever witness such a dangerous dereliction of duty again, for whatever reason, I will have you written up in the formal courts for it. I hope you understand."

With that he dismisses Draco from his attention as though he were nothing of import, a half-blood or a muggle even. Not worthy of his time or his energy and I can feel how deeply that rankles in Draco's very being. He wants to strike back, he wants to defend his honour, but even Draco isn't foolish enough to go head to head with that dark visage now though.

"Miss Parkinson," the words are drawled lazily. "In my immediate assessment, you do not appear to be outwardly injured. Am I incorrect?" 

"No, sir." When Pansy responds, it's with her head held high and no shame or fear in her tone. I have to smile slightly to myself. Therein walks a stunning match for the Malfoy heir; strength, grace and honour combined in such pride. It will be a great pity if the parents don't see the match in front of their eyes. "I have a minor graze to an elbow and a knee from your separation charm, and will require a decent nights rest this evening. I have nothing of import that requires medical attention from either yourself or Madam Pomfrey sir. I would also like to accept full responsibility and punishment for this display of inappropriate behaviour. I threw the first curse. Draco merely retaliated."

The Snakes protect their own, I think lazily. I suppose we have to. Nobody else is going to, after all.

"No." The single word is ice, but Pansy doesn't flinch from it. "Credit me with an above average number of brain cells, Miss Parkinson. That is not what happened and I do not appreciate or reward lies. You will serve a weeks' worth of detention for duelling and a further week for your lie. I will see you tomorrow, seven sharp. And that is in the morning." He greets Pansy's groan with a distinctly humourless smile. "For every minute you are late, I will add a further weeks' worth of detention. You do not wish to be late."

Pansy gulps slightly as those dark, hooded eyes turn to me and Vincent.

"Mr Crabbe, Mr Goyle," he remarks more softly, and if I'm not wrong I'd swear there is concern in his eyes. "I do not believe either of you are in need of further medical attention. If either of you feel the symptoms of magical exhaustion, or you feel in any way unusual Mr Goyle, you are aware of the wand movements?"

I nod silently, grimly wondering why I didn't think of that a mere half hour ago. Three snakes in the air and the whisper of Professor Snape's name is all it takes. Nothing more. There are matching alarms set into his quarters, the potions classrooms and the charm he wears around his neck. I've never actually seen the charm, but I have been assured by at least one senior that it's in the shape of a doe. I still don't believe them. A tightly coiled serpent now, charmed to alert him if one of his charge has immediate and urgent need of him, maybe. But a doe. Selsvey had to be having me on. Whatever form it takes though, it is hidden beneath those dark robes though and out of sight.

That dark gaze flicks back to Draco, his expression merciless and unforgiving.

"I will not ask for any further justification, Mr Malfoy, for I do not believe you can provide it." His tone is snide and hurtful, actively unkind in a way that makes my own hackles rise in Draco's defence, but I'm not that stupid either. "In case you missed it the first time however, I will inform you again that you near completed exhausted your vassal's magical reserves completely, to a recklessly dangerous level. You did this not because there was any real danger, but because of a playground spat. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of you. You will serve the weeks detention with Miss Parkinson, and will report to Professor McGonagall for a further month's detention of her choosing. You can be assured that you will hear from your father in due course."

He waits for a few long beats, but Draco doesn't move from his position or meet his gaze. Instead, he mutters something to his knees that I can't quite make out. Professor Snape clearly does though and he looks down at the crumpled Malfoy heir piercingly, compassion touching his eyes for the first time. There is something like pity in his tone as he responds to those unheard words.

"No, Mister Malfoy. I don't think any of us were."

With that he turns with the characteristic swoop of those long robes. I don't think I imagine the words muttered under his breath. In fact, I am certain that I heard them, I just don't understand them.

"I certainly wasn't."

With that he's gone, leaving Draco to pick himself up from the floor unaided, not a word about the arm that is so clearly broken. Those three words resonate strangely in my mind and I'm trying to figure out the question that the man was responding to. Pansy stands and puts her arm around the Malfoy heir as he lifts his face and howls, his voice distorting awkwardly on the words.

"I wasn't finished with you, Potter!"

No. I don't suppose you were. The Dark Lord certainly wasn't. One way or another though, Potter was certainly finished with us. With all of us.


End file.
